'That's it, go home'

Construction and services company Carillion has collapsed, putting thousands of jobs and pensions at risk. The firm is involved in major public projects such as the HS2 high-speed rail line and manages public service contracts including schools and prisons. Employees and sub-contractors alike have reacted to the news, worried about their wages, pensions and hundreds of thousand of pounds owed in contracts.Phillip, Birmingham”I work on a project in Birmingham on Midland Metropolitan Hospital, which is work subcontracted from Carillion.”We turned up this morning and were told they’ve gone into liquidation and that’s it. The site was closed. “There was 20 of us working for my company, and on the whole site there was 520 people for different companies. “Everyone on the site got told: ‘That’s it, go home.’ My company said, ‘You’ve been laid off.’ “People were just grabbing their stuff and leaving, not knowing what they’d be doing tomorrow morning.”They’ve literally locked the gate. They’ve told us we can get our personal tools off the site if they’re small, but that’s it.”There were kids on there doing their apprenticeships with college, they’re gone too. “I just don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve registered with a few agencies since this morning but I don’t know what I’m going to do for rent.”I’m due wages from my company I don’t know if I’m going to be getting. When I asked my boss, he said the company is owed money for wages. Well, if they’re not getting it, we’re not getting it.”

Martin, Manchester”The pension is one of the things I was intending to withdraw. “It was estimated at £43,000, which may be small to some people but it’s a lot for me. “We haven’t even contacted Carillion with regards to withdrawing it. I think I’d be lucky to even speak to anyone, it was bad enough when I was just getting my estimates.”It’s a big disaster. I heard recently they were struggling but I didn’t know it was that bad. Their ability to repay the money and what it might have done to the share value, I don’t know. “I had my money from another company transferred to the Carillion pension fund as well. It looks as though it was a really bad decision. There’s no way I could have known.”This pension was all I had to fall back on, now it’s in doubt. I haven’t a clue what I’ll do if it doesn’t come.”

Mike, South England “We’re a supplier who do work for Carillion. We provide support services in commercial finance.”We’ve invoiced them for £240,000, going back to September last year. I don’t think we’ll get this money back. “For us, it’s a bad day, it’ll impact us for the year. We’re a large company and therefore we will survive. But it’s just survival. There’s smaller contractors who will be impacted worse. “I guess government contracts will be protected, but we will probably be going directly to the end customers to try to take on those contracts so that we can survive. “Obviously, we won’t be able to recover what’s been lost. Looking at the size of the debt they seem to have, I don’t see a lot of hope of anybody getting anything back. “We’ve always been struggling with the Carillion culture. They’re the last of the big contractor dinosaurs. Their procurement people weren’t good and we didn’t like working for them.”You may also like:Additional reporting by Tom Gerken and Sherie Ryder of BBC UGC and Social News
Source: BBC News